


Friday Night Lights

by Cuda (Scylla)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bull Riding, M/M, rodeo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-09-09
Packaged: 2017-12-26 02:05:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/960292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/pseuds/Cuda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate rodeo-based universe; brief vignette. Ianto goes out a hero, like always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friday Night Lights

Dusk shored up around the Sikeston rodeo like a drawstring bag, cutting the day-bright arena out of reality. Hot white halogens on a haze of humidity and insects lent a surreal shimmer to the grandstands. The light sparked on Jack's silver conchos and played up the lurid red ruin spreading across Ianto's white collar. It shouldn't have happened. It  _never_ happened. There were protocols to avoid this very thing. Ianto and the bull called 4-5-6 dove for the open gate at the same time. Breath knocked out of him, on his chest in the soft arena dirt a dozen yards away, Jack watched the angry animal slam against the steel bars in slow motion.

Ianto wrestled cattle for a living and knew the physics of their two-ton bodies; the muscles in a young steer's neck and the hundred ways it could twist a wicked horn into his face from below. The ground, taped horn that clattered through the bars of the gate was nothing he could have anticipated. The velocity and mass of this death were unfamiliar variables. Where a huge and deadly animal might have spilled out a few seconds before, the crowd spilled in, surrounding Ianto on the ground.

Jack remembered running, flinging himself over the gate and into the dirt on the other side as too-late horsemen ushered 4-5-6 away. He remembered Ianto gasping in bubbles of blood. Panicked eyes rolled up to Jack, glazing as they locked on his face.

Riders died in this sport. It wasn't a new thing. More frequently, riders retired into poverty, bodies broken - but there were still deaths. Not spectators, though. Not the audience. That was the grand illusion - the steel bars and professionals and protocols kept them safe.

Not Ianto, Jack thought, not him.

A chaos of voices closed in over Jack's head. He never noticed when the clowns descended, scattering people like stock to clear a path for sprinting paramedics. He cradled Ianto's head with callused fingers, holding it still; holding Ianto's eyes on his.

Not Ianto,  _please_.


End file.
